Retirement isn’t for Everybody

 Are you the type of person who never was able to live up to stereotypes?  When we think of a stereotype, the classic is the image of your standard senior citizen.  That image is as a slowly moving Grandma or Grandpa who is long done working at their career and wants nothing more than to sit on the back porch and wait for the next holiday to see the grandkids.  Well, if you are like a lot of senior citizens of the new century, we look at that stereotype and say – forget it!

 We are the kind of people who have had the most amazing and exciting lives because we took chances and lived active lives taking on challenges and winning at those challenges.  Probably the most puzzling idea of that sweet stereotype of Grandma and Grandpa is that we all are expected to go into retirement at 65 or 70 and stop working because we couldn’t wait to retire.  But everybody isn’t exactly like that.

Some of us are in careers that are the calling of our lives and going to work is as much like play as it is work.  You love what we do and the idea of not doing it every day of your life is more like a prison than a reward at the end of life.  In fact, the very idea of changing how we live because it is “the end of life” seems like surrender as much as it is a long vacation.  And we are not the kind to surrender to the inevitability that life will end.  The end may come and get you, but it is going to have a fight on its hands.

If you are that kind of person, retirement may not be for you because retirement isn’t for everybody.  And just because some people have the image of stopping their careers just when things were getting great as a way to live their last few decades, why should you be forced to live someone else’s dream?  That is why we live in a free country.  You should not be forced to retire. 

If you love what you do, getting up and going to work is as much of what makes your blood go through your veins and your metabolism work right as good food and rest.  People by nature are born to work.  It’s what defines us and making something to contribute to society and being rewarded for that labour is what makes you tick. So you should not feel bad when you are the senior citizen that throws the stereotype out the window and continues to thrive doing what you love – working at your job.

One way to expand your role in the profession you love is not to step down but to step into the role of senior advisor, chief counsel and the wise old owl of the office.  Your decades of experiences are a treasure trove of wisdom and a source of teaching for the young pups coming up.  This is one reason why in a lot of companies all around the country, management is seeing the wisdom of retaining senior citizen workers rather than forcing them into retirement. 

This is a big shift from the mentality that was prevalent for far too long that the old had to get out of the way for the new.  Now the old are a precious resource to teach the young how to do things right.  By treating senior citizens with reverence and respect, business is learning what many civilizations have known for a long time, senior citizens are a treasure to be prized and cared for, not thrown away.

 

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren

There is a family phenomenon that you may face now as you should be heading into a leisurely life of a senior citizen and retirement.  But if you find that you are being called upon to raise your own grandchildren, that is a senior citizen lifestyle that is very different than what was expected.  It might be somewhat comforting to know that the incidences of grandparents being called upon to raise their grandchildren is more common now than ever before.  But the fact that a lot of senior citizens have to raise their grandkids doesn’t make it any easier to face that challenge yourself.

 There are a lot of reasons by senior citizens find themselves raising their grandchildren.  The nature of the problem will say a lot about how you approach the many issues of child-rearing.  The reasons range from the death of the parents to situations of abuse, drug or alcohol difficulties or if your child had the baby out of wedlock.  So the extent to which you can have the birth parent active in the life of the baby will be driven by the severity of the reason you are being asked to become a parent a second time around.

 Probably the biggest question you will is what to tell the child.  Honesty is so important in raising children.  It won't take them long to figure out that her “parents” are a lot older than the other children’s parents.  So if you can be honest, while that creates other anxieties in the child, those are much healthier for him or her to confront than dealing with being deceived about parentage issues.

 If you have the birth mother living with you as well, that can be good or bad.  As the girl’s parents, you will be doing her a favour if you enable her to serve in her own parental role as much as she possibly can.  The ideal situation would be if the child knew this was his or her mom rather than go down the road of saying she is an older sister.   Then you can serve in the capacity of caregivers and facilitators but still allow that natural mother/child bond to help both grow into those roles.  It may be hard in the short term but as the child grows older, you and your daughter will be glad you made the effort to handle the issue this way.

The availability of other family members will also be a factor in the demands of parenthood.  Children are active little creatures and they love to run and play actively, especially with their parents.  But sometimes senior citizens are not as much the run and play as much as the cuddle and read a story kind of parents.  If the child has uncles or aunts living nearby who can step in and provide that kind of support to the child, that will take some pressure off of you to try to keep up with the kiddos.

As you step into the role of parent of your own grandchild, it’s proper although a bit frightening to look down the road for 18 years and wonder, will I make it?  It’s a fair question and one you need to make provision for.  Any parent provides for their child in the event of their death and in the case of seniors raising children, those provisions are even more important.  But the provisions don’t just end with financial support.  If Grandpa and Grandma both pass away before the child is done growing up, there should be a natural and acceptable home for that child to go to that will be comfortable for them and where they can continue to grow and learn with as little interruption as possible.

Short of the death of your children, don’t discount the return of your child to assume the role of parent again.  You don’t want this to be a hostile interruption.  If there was abuse or substance problems, there will be legal oversight and a caseworker will have to be involved to determine if your son or daughter is capable of being a parent.  But if they can accept that responsibility and they are prepared to both love and care for the child, then you can hand that responsibility for and feel fulfilled that you did your part to assure your precious grandchild was properly cared for when he or she needed you the most.

 

Act your age

 When you want a child to be more mature, you commonly say, “Act your age.” This phrase gets a lot of use even for adults, probably mostly for middle-aged men who lapse into immature behaviour from time to time. But there is a truth behind that little phrase.

For each phase of our lives, there is an expectation of how we will behave. We can refuse to accept those expectations of adult behaviour and insist that, “I refuse to grow up.” This is called the Peter Pan syndrome and most people consider it more a sign of desperate clinging to youth than anything noble.

So, as you move into the era of your life that is called your golden years, you may realize at some point that you have to “act your age”. When that time comes that you realize that they have inherited the role of a grandparent but so maybe it's time to act like one comes at different times for everyone. But there comes that time to begin to become a grandparent for the people who need this of you the most – those sweet grandbabies who need a grandparent just you needed one when you were young.

The key question to ask yourself is, “what does it mean to be Grandparent and how can I grow into that role for my children and grandkids?”

You didn’t do anything to become a Grandparent. You just raised your son or daughter to be a responsible young adult and nature took its course. Before long you got the call that they had a baby. So, to understand how you can best live up to that high calling, probably the best role model is your own Grandparents and what you needed from her when you were small. Taken in that light, the things those little ones need are…

·        To spoil them. This is the fun part of being a Grandparent. You don’t have to spoil them seriously but if there isn’t always something fun to do and maybe candy and gum at your place if you’re good that would be good wouldn’t it?

·        A place to go. “Going to the Grandparent's house” should mean something just this side of going to heaven to your grandkids. And as long as it stays that way, your grandchildren will be able to always come to you even in times of trouble.

·        Unconditional love. It’s the parent’s job to provide the discipline and rules. You are the one with a ready hug, a loving smile and who always has time to give to the Grandkids

·        A ready ear. A Grandparent is the one that your grandkids can always pour their heart out to. Your understanding and your patience mean you will wait for your grandchild to get out what is on her mind is what makes time with you so precious.

Figuring Forward in an Uncertain World

 The Marginalian by Maria Popova is always a wonderful highlight to my week. This is from her newsletter on March 9th. Subscribe to her blog https://www.themarginalian.org/   

We make things and seed them into the world, never fully knowing — often never knowing at all — whom they will reach and how they will blossom in other hearts, how their meaning will unfold in contexts we never imagined. A couple of days ago, I received a moving note from a woman who had read Figuring and found herself revisiting the final page — it was helping her, she said, live through the terror and confusion of these uncertain times. I figured I’d share that page in case it helps anyone else.

Meanwhile, someplace in the world, somebody is making love and another a poem. Elsewhere in the universe, a star manyfold the mass of our third-rate sun is living out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a black hole, its exhale bending spacetime itself into a well of nothingness that can swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever produced, every poem, statue, and symphony we’ve ever known — an entropic spectacle insentient to questions of blame and mercy, devoid of why.

In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all. The Voyager will still be sailing into the interstellar shorelessness on the wings of the “heavenly breezes” Kepler had once imagined, carrying Beethoven on a golden disc crafted by a symphonic civilization that long ago made love and war and mathematics on a distant blue dot.

But until that day comes, nothing once created ever fully leaves us. Seeds are planted and come abloom generations, centuries, civilizations later, migrating across coteries, countries, and continents. Meanwhile, people live and people die — in peace as war rages on, in poverty and disrepute as latent fame awaits, with much that never meets its more, in shipwrecked love.

I will die.

You will die.

The atoms that huddled for a cosmic blink around the shadow of a self will return to the seas that made us.

What will survive of us are shoreless seeds and stardust.